The History of the Victorian Age

The History of the Victorian age The Victorian era produced many eminent figures. Lytton Strachey was one of them. Born in 1880, Strachey was a British biographer and a critic who is credited of having revolutionized the art of writing biography. He opened a new era of biographical writing by adopting an irreverent attitude to the past, especially to the volumes of the Victorian biography. His book, Eminent Victorians, a wartime book composed of four miniature …

…biographies are short anecdotal, witty and entertaining. His aim, as he has declared in the preface, was to cast " a sudden revealing searchlight into obscure recesses hitherto undivined". In the process he occasionally sacrificed truth, but the result - polished, malicious, and lively - made him the hero of the Victorian era. Even today, when people use "Victorian" as a synonym for "smug," "prudish" or "flowery," they are showing the impact of Strachey's satiric perspective.